mobile madness in media

They are now being used in news reporting.

Mobile phone advancements are creating new opportunities for news reporting. Al Jazeera (voted the 5th most influential brand globally in an interbrand survey in 2004) acknowledges mobile technologies’ potential and Safdar Mustafa, from Al Jazeera’s mobile media unit, discusses how mobile phones are being used in news reporting and describes a case study where a mobile phone was used to report on a bomb explosion in Chad.

Meet Vivian – the vivacious virtual vixen

Vivian, virtual girlfriend

I recently went to Johannesburg to work at the Mobile Active08 Conference. There I encountered a number of applications and advantages of mobile phones. Mobile phones form a part of a virtual community and they connect people through various means be it Mxit, MMS or SMS.

 In Hong Kong, one is able to get a “virtual girlfriend” on your cellphone if it has video capabilities. It is modelled on the idea of the Tamagotchi pet. This has opened a whole new door for lonely men. The program was developed by a software company called Artificial Life Inc. (www.artificiallife.com).

‘Vivian’, a twenty year old gold digger, will appear on the screen as an animated figure, but is quite a needy girlfriend who requires a great deal of attention and expensive gifts. These are virtual gifts (which the ‘boyfriend’ pays real money for) but Vivian is not a slut and cybersex does not come with the package.

Facebook identities

 

Here is a podcast which explores people’s views on their online/digital identities.

Boy Oh Boy- That’s pervy!

Objectification-the child's head is cut off (by: T.Lang)

I did Fine Art at university for three years and produced work where I edited family films to show me as a child playing naked. People responded to my work by saying it bordered on the pornographic and a lecturer actually said it verged on the sinister.

Ok…I’m not blind! I know that the pixelated images and the blurred faces did reference child pornography, but these images were of me, with my consent and produced as fine art images not kiddie porn!

The intention of my images were distorted and taken out of context, but what got me thinking, was what if these seemingly innocent images were published online and distributed by individuals with paedophilic tendencies… how would I feel?

Well, disturbed to say the least… but it made me realise that there are organisations that perpetuate and distribute such indecent materials.

What is troubling is that many people share images of their children on the internet. These children are often naked in family photos. A South African artist, Terry Kurgan, was also once criticized for her work where her own children were photographed naked in their private home.

 It made me think about the various deviant communities out there in the virtual sphere and I got the chills when I read Nambla’s slogan, which read: “welcome to a world of pleasure”.

Virtual Reality: what a trip!

The Matrix was a popular film from 1999

Neo reaches for the red pill sitting in Morpheus’s hand and with that action, he realises that The Matrix is a huge virtual reality. The Matrix gave virtual reality a bad reputation- an evil virtual reality where blurring of real life and the virtual world become intermeshed to such an extent that the characters are unable to tell the difference from the real and virtual environments.

Virtual Reality (VR) is when someone interacts with something that isn’t actually real. Ilda Ladeira, a Computer Science PHD student at UCT, says that most people believe VR is a “fancy” technology. “What people don’t realise is that when they are playing a game on an average computer- you are experiencing VR.”